


once I was happy, but now I'm forlorn

by ijustwanttodestroy



Series: smile from his perch on the birds below [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Court of Owls, Dick Grayson is Robin, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 15:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15560781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijustwanttodestroy/pseuds/ijustwanttodestroy
Summary: He does a cartwheel, followed by a round off, and then finishes to a handspring — all executed perfectly. He bows to his audience. “Ta-dah,” Talon says, and then claps for himself.“Enough,” Batman says.





	once I was happy, but now I'm forlorn

 

There he is.

 

The last Talon. The last Flying Grayson. Legacy after legacy in a body of a boy. A man.

 

Not a man. _Barely_ a man.

 

 _Robin_ , he calls himself. Bruce recognizes the colors he wears, the red and yellow, adorned green. Bright, eye-catching. Pretty. Designed for the stage.

 

“It’s simple, really,” Grayson says, and the way he says it — honest, with an almost innocent quality, like a child — gives a bad taste in his mouth. “He killed my parents.”

 

The Flying Graysons. Ten years old cold case. Of course.

 

Grayson uncrouches from his position and proceeds to do a handstand. Incapable, seemingly, to stay still. He does a flip, flawlessly, and lands on his feet. He walks — no, _prowls_ , to him.

 

“You know how it feels like, don’t you?” Grayson says. He’s closing in, closing in on him. Batman does not step back. “You know how it feels like to lose them. Again and again and again. Every night,” Grayson says, his voice smooth and clinical. “Watching them die. And being able to do absolutely _nothing about it.”_

 

His face is merely inches from Batman’s, now. Grayson is shorter than him, by several inches. His eyes hit the light. Grayson’s eyes glow in sickening flashes of yellow. Intelligent and curious. Like a cat’s — or an _owl’s_. _Tapetum lucidum._ Another reminder that Talons — or rather, _the_ Talon — is barely human.

 

“No response?” Grayson prods, sounding actually disappointed. “C’mon, now, _talk_ to me,” he is uncomfortably close now. They’re breathing the same air. Grayson leans to the side of his face. “ _Bruce Wayne_ ,” Grayson whispers, to his ear.

 

Batman attacks — his fist hits nothing. Expected. Grayson jumps back, _flips_ , even, several of those infuriating movements. Giggling. “ _Bruce Wa-a-yne_ ,” Grayson sing-songs. “Secret identities, yes? How _exciting_. You do not seem to be surprised, though,” he says, thoughtful, putting the tip of a slender finger to his lips. He is keeping a distance. One feet behind the other, a hand on his hip — a performer posing, ready to give a show. “You had figured that the Court knows _everything_ , huh?” Grayson grins, a manic thing, the white row of his teeth glinting in the dark of the room. “Like little _Jason_ and little _Timothy_ — “

 

Bad taste in his mouth.

 

“You will not touch them.”

 

Grayson tilts his head to the side. It’s sickening how innocent he makes the gesture seem. “And Alfred the butler. A _butler_!” He laughs, a boyish sound, saccharine sweet, "how _curious_." He does a cartwheel, followed by a round off, and then finishes to a handspring — all executed perfectly. He bows to his audience. “Ta-dah,” Talon says, and then claps for himself.

 

“Enough,” Batman says.

 

“Bruce Wayne,” Grayson repeats, and then — the cheerful atittude disappears, just like that. His expression and voice, suddenly, are void of a thing. “Father Thomas Wayne. Mother Martha Wayne. Death on June 26 1990. Time of death: 10:47 post meridiem. Bullet wound to the chest. Bullet wound to the — “

 

“Enough.”

 

“— throat. Complications. Pulmonary damage. Internal bleeding. Lacerated artery. Exsanguination. Jason Todd. First ward. First _sidekick_ ,” he recites it all, as if from memory. Voice inflectionless through it all, like a reading machine. A reporting soldier. “Crowbar. Internal bleeding. Punctured lung. Total of twenty-eight broken bones. Wrist, pelvis, femur, patella, C6 vertebra, mandible —“

 

It happens in a split second. Batman has his hand around Grayson’s neck and slams him to the wall. Talon does not even flinch.

 

Temporal. Parietal. Both ankles. Clavicle. False ribs — he memorizes them well enough. He does not need the quizzing. “ _Enough_.”

 

Richard Grayson goes quiet. He looks at him, silent, empty. His eyes gleam unsettlingly, unreadable and inhuman. A blank slate.

 

“Jonathan Grayson. Mary Lloyd Grayson,” he says. And Batman grinds his teeth. _The Amazing Flying Graysons._ He can hear it, almost; the cheering, the clapping and the screams — a ghost from ten years ago. “38 feet fall. Intracranial bleeding. Laceration. Vertex. Base. Spine. Snapped. Scapula. Skull. Shattered.”

 

Richard’s face resembles a statue; cold and empty, beautiful in a dead way. Granite chiseled to perfection, like a porcelain doll, pretty and preserved to be just so. Plastic flowers. He says, “why do we _fall,_ Bruce Wayne?”

 

Someone told him the answer a long time ago.

 

Batman says, “We fall so we can learn to get back up _.”_

 

Grayson kicks his chest — it rattles against Kevlar. His strength, for a body that slender, is unnatural. Electrum. _Damn_ metas. Grayson hooks his legs — _climbs_ up to the Batman’s arm in ridiculous show of flexibility, and flips over, slamming him to the ground, staying on top of him. Pinning him. “Wrong,” he hisses. Grayson stretches above him, like a cat, as he leans again, whispering in his ear like a child telling a secret, if not for the sheer viciousness of his voice: “we fall because someone _pushes us_.”

 

Batman electrocutes him. Grayson falls back — pain doesn’t seem to faze him. He looks at his jerking body, curiously watching his own nerves twitching from the shock. He recovers fairly quickly. Talons are, on some level, immune to electrocution — Batman saves this information in his head. Grayson blinks at him, eyes big. Owlish. He’s smiling again, the stoic visage vanishing far too quickly. Grayson smiles like a child, teeth and no terror. Like a showman, all charm and honeyed curves. He says, “we get up to _push back.”_

 

Unpredictable. Skilled. Insightful. Trained. Physically enhanced. Batman concludes, _trouble._

 

 _“_ Needn’t you worry,” Grayson says, sugary, like a kid attempting to appease his nanny. “I have no interest in killing you, nor your _baby bats_. So long as you stay out of my way, that is.”

 

“You won’t kill anyone,” Batman says. “I won’t let you.”

 

The smile disappears. There it is — the Talon in him. The shift in attitude is disquieting. Nothing Batman hasn’t seen before, though — dealt with enough villains, you start to notice the pattern in the cliches. “You don’t tell me what to _do_ ,” Grayson says, something feral flashing in those eyes. They are unnatural, those eyes, animalistic. “No one tells me what to do.”

 

“Not even,” Batman says, “the Court of Owls?”

 

Silence — something shifts in the air. The tension palpable. The danger imminent.

 

“The Court is no more,” threat poised in every seams of his silhouette.

 

“You killed for them,” Batman says coolly.

 

For a second, Batman thinks Grayson is going to attack, with how _hateful_ he looks — dark brows scrunching, eyes glimmering, lips locked in a snarl. Handsome features twisting into an ugly kind of fury. But then that visage, also, disappears — face now carefully empty of emotion, just like that. As if by a push of a button. Talon watches Batman for a moment. “You are _baiting_ me. You want information,” Grayson announces, unabashedly vocal with his deduction. “I can list the names for you, if you’d like.”

 

He _does_ need the names.

 

“You killed for them,” he says again. “You killed _them_.”

 

Thirty dead. _Thirty._ And now, Tony Zucco is on the way to becoming another number in that toll.

 

“Yes,” Grayson shrugs. And how he manages to make a simple roll of shoulders look graceful, Batman doesn’t know. Thirty. All corrupters and murderers and abducters. Rapists.

 

Embezzlements. Human traffickings. Assassinations. Slavery. Sex rings. Child prostitutions. Every single one of them are responsible for Gotham. Responsible for Richard Grayson.

 

“You are angry,” Grayson says, watching him, thoughtfully. “Why?”

 

Richard Grayson is a murderer.

 

Richard Grayson is a victim.

 

“You won’t get away with this, Grayson.”

 

Richard looks at him, speed inhuman, in a _flick_. “ _Robin_ ,” he snaps, teeth bared, eyes bright. “Not. _Gray_. _Son_.”

 

Robin. Talon. Court of Owls. What _is_ it with the avian etymology?

 

“You will be detained in Arkham Asylum.”

 

“And you think I will _let_ it?” the snarl disappears, gives way to a grin, disconcertingly gleeful. “I’d rather die, you see, than be _caged._ Have some courtesy and kill me instead, would you?”

 

Batman says nothing. Robin tilts his head again, eyes crinkling with his smile. “But Batman does not kill. Ah. How _quaint_ ,” he drawls, gaze examining, calculating. “I refused to kill, once,” and then he puts up his hand on his mouth in a mock whisper, “they didn’t _like_ that.”

 

He wonders what could have been, had he managed to find Richard Grayson before the Owls did. Had he — brought him in. Given him a home — a _father —_

 

Perhaps, he thinks, perhaps, in another life.

 

But he has no time for daydreams.

 

And yet. He thinks of the broken bodies on the floor. _Who are you?_ The pool of blood, the blue eyed boy, the scent of rust and popcorn in the air. _Bruce Wayne._ His hand, how big it had seemed, on the child’s shaking shoulder. The words _it’s going to be alright_ stuck in his throat. Because it’ll never be alright. Not for Bruce. And now, not for Richard Grayson.

 

 _What’s your name_?

 

_Dick. Dick Grayson._

 

“Dick,” Bruce says, takes off his cowl. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

 

He has no time for daydreams. No time for _perhaps_ and _what if_ s. There is no other life.

 

“Come with me,” Bruce says.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr if you want to tell me anything](https://i-just-want-to-destroy.tumblr.com)   
> 


End file.
